All posts tagged Shipping

We’ve seen the rise of China as a manufacturing powerhouse, the world’s largest internet and telecommunications market, and the go-to destination for the world’s commodity exporters. But now we’re starting to see another major Chinese influence on the world economy: its corporate regulators. Read More »

From coal to wheat, China’s growing hunger and wealth have led it to dig ever more of its natural resources from the ground.

But these industries have also plagued economic development, weighing the country with an oversupply of polluting and low-value production capacity.They’ve also raised worries over whether China can reliably produce enough safe food to feed the world’s most populous nation.

Here’s a look at five big themes likely to shape China’s pivotal role in the world’s resource markets in 2014. Read More »

Japan's three major auto makers suffered continued sales setbacks in China last month. adding urgency to efforts to reignite sales in the vast but increasingly competitive market; the world's third-busiest container port is in danger of losing competitiveness as a crippling strike in Hong Kong dragged on into its sixth day; Nestlé will increase efforts to grow coffee in China to supply a growing population of coffee drinkers and to secure quality beans. Read More »

Amid a serious drought in orders for their mainstay cargo ships, leading Chinese shipbuilders are under growing pressure to win more contracts for vessels used in offshore oil and gas exploration.

Relative newcomers, the Chinese face formidable competition from South Korean and Singaporean shipbuilders that are more experienced in building specialized ships. But with strong government backing and a willingness to offer low- or no-margin deals, China could one day hold a strong position in offshore energy vessels in much the same way it won a significant chunk of the market for conventional ships. Read More »

There’s a saying in Greece: “Whoever holds the watermelon and the knife, decides the size of the slice.” Increasingly in the shipping world, it’s the Chinese that are doing the chopping.

China recently knocked off Germany as owner of the world’s third-largest shipping fleet in terms of capacity, after Japan and Greece. It’s been a rapid rise. China now has about 10% of global capacity, up from 6.3% in 2006.

The up-and-coming maritime men of China have an admirer in prominent Greek shipowner Nicolas Pappadakis. “Without China there would be no shipping industry,” Mr. Pappadakis said recently on the sidelines of a shipping conference in Xiamen, China. Read More »

Senior GE executives are urging countries such as the U.S. and Australia to become more open to Chinese investors to help boost financing for infrastructure needs; German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives in China on Thursday at the head of the largest German business delegation ever to visit the country; sluggish global growth has eased the world’s once-surging demand for Chinese goods this year, and the head of the world’s biggest shipping line believes the slowdown suggests more permanent challenges to China’s export sector.

Investors, long enamored with the yuan, have increasingly soured on the Chinese currency and are boosting their bets that it will decline against the dollar in coming months; as Japan’s government is trying to smooth a quarrel with China over the sovereignty of a set of islands that lies between them, the man who ignited the current flare-up shows no sign of letting up the heat; China Cosco is under pressure to shore up its finances as the shipping company prepares to report a first-half loss. Read More »

In 2010, Hong Kong’s government—long criticized by activists for failing to clean up the city’s iconic Victoria Harbor—was handed an extraordinary corporate gift. A group of 17 cruise and shipping lines volunteered to begin burning more environmentally friendly fuel when berthed in Hong Kong’s waterways, at no small expense to their shareholders.

Now, though, as the shipping industry reels from billion-dollar losses, the future of that agreement is on the rocks. The so-called “Fair Winds Charter” is slated to expire in December, and without more government support, say companies, prospects for its revival look murky. Read More »

Shanghai claimed this year to be the world’s busiest container handling port. One tradable it doesn’t want mixed into the throughput figures: nuclear and radioactive items.

In a joint U.S.-China non-proliferation initiative, officials next week are scheduled to commission and demonstrate a radiation detection system at Shanghai’s flagship Yangshan port, according to a brief statement distributed Friday by the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai.

“This U.S.-Chinese effort is the first project of its kind in China,” the statement said. Read More »

For all its failures at forging a united front to control global iron-ore prices, China still has the heft to remind us that the appetite of the world’s biggest steel factory matters, a lot, when it comes to influencing commodity markets.

Exhibit A comes from the Baltic Dry Index, which could use a drink after June’s performance.

Shipbrokers say the plunge, which more than halved capesize-vessel freight rates in a month, is due to faltering demand for iron ore from Chinese steel mills, as they grapple with a tougher export environment as well as policy moves to rein excess construction.

Capesize vessels are the supersized carriers that account for a third of international seaborne trade. Their fortunes lie in the business of the world’s top three iron-ore miners, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Vale, which together control three-quarters of seaborne iron-ore supply. Read More »

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